


Delicate

by Kangoo



Series: LGBT Destiny Month 2019 [18]
Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: (a concept™), I read the Marasenna lore book just before writing this so it's mostly flowery bullshit, Injury, LGBT Destiny Month, M/M, Rock metaphors, Soul Bond, god what am i doing with my life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-19
Updated: 2019-06-19
Packaged: 2020-05-14 11:50:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19272700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kangoo/pseuds/Kangoo
Summary: "[Uldren] measures himself by the bravery of his losses. By what he can survive losing." - Brephos II





	Delicate

**Author's Note:**

> "[Glass] is a state of matter intermediate between the close-packed, highly ordered array of a crystal and the highly disordered array of gas" - Wikipedia, Volcanic glass
> 
> this is 100% bullshit and i had fun anyway
> 
> prompt + soul bond idea borrowed from the really cool [bibliokatz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bibliokatz/pseuds/bibliokatz)

Jolyon sits up in bed, entire body tingling with pins and needles. It’s all it takes for him to know, like he knows the pattern of his breath and the beat of his heart, that Uldren got himself in trouble. There are copper and salt on his tongue and their aching familiarity sends panic through his body. Uldren is hurt, Uldren is bleeding, Uldren is somewhere out there, setting up drones, and the implications of a wound is that there is something out there with him.

He shakes off the remnants of sleep and stumbles out of bed, pulling his clothes on as he goes. He grabs his sidearm off his bedside table on his way out the door. Just in case. Then as soon as he steps out of his room he’s running, feet pounding the ground to the rhythm of his singular thought. _Ul-dren, Ul-dren_ , _Ul-dren_. The name thrums through his bones, a magnet reaching for its complementary opposite. Each step is a syllable, is a wish, is a wordless panic. The gravitational pull of Uldren on him is a steadying presence, an assurance that as long as there is a pull there is something to be pulled _by_ , pulled _to_.

The blood-taste fades as he skids on a sharp turn, almost collides with a wall. There, stalking through the corridors: Uldren, bloody and grinning, a sight so familiar Jolyon came to find it comforting. He slows his run down to a jog, his jog to a hurried walk, keeps his eyes locked on Uldren’s back. This sense of panic is still fresh, not yet worn by habit and time, and he finds himself more annoyed than worried at its presence. He should have known Uldren was fine, should have guesses it from the constant hum in his bones, giddy joy curled fire-warm under his breastbone.

Light, he’s going to punch the grin right off this moron’s face for making him worry like that.

He catches the tail end of a sentence — _I found aliens, and one of them cut my throat._ Catches the sight of cytogel against his throat, blood all over his front. Doesn’t think twice about it. He bowls Uldren over and throws him over his shoulder without a moment’s hesitation.

“Allteacher,” he greets politely, all the while ignoring Uldren’s outraged sputtering. “Your Majesty. I’m afraid whatever he’s talking about will have to wait.”

“Wha-”

He turns on his heels. Unafraid of turning his back on the Queen-in-everything-but-name, knowing he has as much power over her and her brother as they have over him. Meaning: as much as Uldren will grant them, grant himself. Meaning: too much. Meaning: not enough. Meaning: ‘damn it, Uldren’ is a shared expression among the two of them, with similar fondness and terror for what he can do to them and they can in turn inflict upon him.

Can Mara feel fear, even, for a man she’d so willingly sacrifice? Does she dread his loss as much as Joylon does? He doubts it, because no one dreads Uldren as much as he does.

“ _You,”_ he hisses, jostling Uldren none-too-gently, “Got your throat cut by an unknown entity and immediately came to gloat over it. I’m getting you to a doctor whether you want it or not.”

Uldren doesn’t want it and it doesn’t matter. They go anyway. Jolyon dumps him on an infirmary bed, glares at him all the while a doctor is seeing to him, sewing the ugly gash shut. Keeps glaring while Uldren sulks, prodding the bandages wrapped around his throat like he longs for the open wound underneath.

“I had a report to give,” he tells Jolyon, aiming for disinterested or angry and landing somewhere awkward between the two. “An important one.”

“I’m in your head and something, someone, slit your throat open. You’ll forgive me for getting _worried_.”

Uldren freezes, the constantly-moving engine of self-destruction of his body coming to a stop. He tilts his head, bares a bandaged throat like an offer of peace and a challenge both.

“I forgot,” he says, honest.

Jolyon doesn’t know how he could. _He_ can’t forget. The bond is a constant weight, a magnet spinning on itself, pushing and pulling in turns. He feels Uldren like a live wire on the edge of his mind. Somewhere along the way he became a conduit between his lightning-strike energy and the rest of the universe. Maybe that’s how he manages to forget: the lightning doesn’t know the rod that grounds it anymore than it does the fire it lights on impact, blooming in Lichtenberg figures like vines.

He doesn’t say it. Doesn’t think about the fact that Uldren probably knows, anyway, plucking the idea from his mind or reading it over his face.

“Losing immortality doesn’t mean you have to throw yourself toward your own premature end at terminal velocity,” he says instead. “Have some pity for my nerves, at least.”

He cradles Uldren’s jaw with one hand, brushes his thumb along the line of his cheekbone, careful the way one is holding Fulgurite. Wary of its sharp edges and how easily it breaks.

Uldren scowls. “I’m not made of _glass_ ,” he says, and it’s a coincidence only in the barest sense of the word, in that he saw it in Jolyon and only didn’t realize it because he’s a huge moron who doesn’t think about his own emotions as much as he should. “You don’t have to treat me like I’m—“

_Fragile. Delicate. Breakable._

“I know,” Jolyon says. Presses a kiss at the corner of his mouth and moves back, moves away. Before he can do something truly stupid like wrap Uldren in a blanket and abducts him somewhere nothing can ever hurt him anymore. He likes the taste of blood too much; doesn’t understand worth as anything but something to be proven and sharpened, again and again, on the edge of a knife. It wouldn’t be fair to either of them.

He doesn’t say out of the two of them, he’s the one most likely to break, his edges sharp and brittle, obsidian-like.

Doesn’t say of the two of them, he’s the knife, wielded for and against itself.

Doesn’t say anything, because none of his metaphors make sense beyond the electric hum of his own mind.

He just leaves. Turns on his heels and strides right out the door. Unafraid to turn his back to someone holding so much power over him, clinging to what little power he holds back.


End file.
